To sign up for this seminar and to choose the dates you want to attend, please click on the linked code number below.

Whether you are just learning about glass etching or adding to your techniques,
this is one of the two classes you should start with (the other is the 4 day Professional Glass Etching Seminar). Start here if you are most interested in etching gift items, awards, corporate gifts, signs and any other product with a great deal of detail. Where the Pro class emphasizes the etching techniques, this seminar shows you etching basics, plus complete instruction in how to create your etched images easily, using a dramatic photo resist technique that avoids having to hand cut resist. Your best and fastest way to learn all about etching is to take both classes, and several times a year, we schedule them together.

Etch a corporate logo on an elegant crystal award or a stunning crystal bowl. Etch your signature on a piece of glass, or a sketch, or your kids' drawings, or almost any black and white design!. Easily, quickly, with no tedious tracing or hand cutting - no matter how complex the design. Sound incredible? Well, it is! Photo resist etching is a great new technology that has only been around for a few years, and is not well known at all.

Photo resist is an amazing new technique for creating an etching stencil to be applied to a piece of glass and etched.

In the past, a glass etching stencil was created by enlarging the design, tracing every line by hand onto a resilient resist material on the glass, then hand cutting every line with a stencil knife. After cutting, you still had to peel out all the elements of resist where you wanted the etching to appear. This was quite tedious and time consuming, especially with complex designs and designs with tiny detail. It was even more tedious if you had to do a complex design two or three times or 50 times - or 500!

Now, with photo resist, everything has changed. Etching fine detail is now not only fun, but is profitable, too. Etch these complex designs a dozen times, or a hundred, or a thousand - by using photo resist! But wait - did you know that there are 4 distinctly different types of photo resist? Or that each one has its own advantages? Not to worry, because we cover each one of these different types of resist thoroughly, including the new RapidMask.

Don't miss this valuable class! Enrollment is limited to a maximum of 4 students and the seminar is only taught at our school/studio in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

This intensive 3 day seminar includes lots of hands-on practice, so you really learn the techniques! in this class, you create from 20 - 40 individual photo resists and complete at least 10 projects, including etching on glasware, thick glass slabs, tile, stone, ceramic items and more. You not only learn surface etching techniques, but also how to use photo resist to carve and shade glass in multiple stages.

Learn similar glass etching techniques to those taught in our Professional Seminar, but geared strictly to photo resist. Learn how to personalize beautiful glass and crystal pieces for corporate or individual gifts. Learn how to create your own photo resists, use pre-imaged resists, or combine with other resist techniques. Computer hardware and software (commonly available programs) useful for creating originals will be discussed and demonstrated, as will the topic of how to print out your designs for photo resist.

Classes are held several times a year, usually back-to-back with our 4 day Professional Seminar. Come for one or both seminars and stay in our outstanding accomodations at Aliento. See the schedule page for current classes!

One last note!As good as photo resist is, and as much of a revolution it is producing in glass etching, it will not do everything. It has not and probably will never replace the older technique of hand-cutting when you want to do sophisticated multi-stage carving and shading. It is not used on large etchings very often (even surface etchings) because it is fairly expensive (compared to hand-cut resist). This is especially true if you only want one etching of the design instead of several. We find that using photo resist compliments the existing techniques and adds a world of new products and applications for etching. That is why we continue to teach both the Professional and the Photo Resist seminars!

An example of the type of award you can make with photo resist.

Imagine being able to take the intricate image in black and white and create an etching resist (in purple) in just a few minutes - with NO hand cutting of resist! Without photo resist, this type of project would take almost a full day to finish.

In just a few more minutes, you can etch the image and get a beautiful finished piece like this on 1/2" thick crystal clear glass. Obviously, you don't have to be an artist, and all you need is a source of copyright free black and white artwork, which we discuss in the class.

Students do from 10-15 projects in this class, selecting from dozens of different types of blank glassware, plates, thick glass slabs, curved glass, mirror, stone or ceramic tile. Here, Norm (one of the instructors) helps Ruth H. match her photo resists with glass for a project.

A beautiful remembrance of a fine performance is created on this crystal clock by the use of photo resist. Learn computer layout and printing techniques for this process in our intensive class.

In this fascinating class you will not only learn how to etch images like this dragon on dark gray glass and the word "Love" on a red crystal heart, we also teach you how to gold fill them for extra beauty and impact.

Yes, we also etch tile (and even stone) in this exciting class! The 4" tiles to the left show the color change you get in tile when you etch through the glaze to the clay body underneath. The blue tile is single stage carved while the yellow tile shows the effects of the multi-stage shading technique. Believe it or not (hats off to Ripley), all projects shown on this page (except the clock and award) are student projects!